Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Find: Meet the company that's behind HP's smartwatch

HP threw a curveball when it announced a surprisingly good-looking smartwatch earlier this year, the Michael Bastian-designed Chronowing. It doesn't have the horsepower of an Android Wear device or the to-be-released Apple Watch, but the Chronowing still manages notifications from your phone, has a neat subdial that simulates an analog watch face, and — this is key — actually kind of looks like a real watch.

But HP didn't make the Chronowing, it turns out. Multiple sources familiar with the relationship have confirmed that the manufacturer behind the timepiece is Meta, the Fossil spinoff that recently launched its own M1 line of smartwatches penned by former Vertu designer Frank Nuovo.